Veggie meal plan on a budget. ANy pointers?

pinksorrell

Hi all,

I have spent a frustrating few hours trying to find a thread on finding a vegetarian meal plan on a budget. I am also trying to lose weight so there's an extra challenge. I am not so keen on SW or WW - more interested in the back to basics idea of home made food. I have used a Tesco diet plan in the past which lost some weight but it was too expensive for me to maintain in cost of the plan and also extra items to buy.

I have 3 children to feed aswell so any recipe ideas/meal plans would need to be adaptable to feed a whole family.

PLease could someone point me in the right direction. Thanks.

rockie4

I don't know how to do linnks but if you look in the indexed collections at the top of the page and go into 'complete cooking collections' you will find veggie meal plans in the vegetarian bit, it's down at the bottom

I found it really useful when I started out on MSE :T

SunnyGirl

Weezl's thread is a good one for cheap meals and lots of them are vegetarian

Feed a Family of Four on £20 for a month is a good thread too.

Cheapest Healthy Meal has some good ideas on it

Hope that some of these are some help to you.

savingforoz

Cooking in bulk for the freezer helps immensely. If you have a slow cooker, use that to make bean and veg based casseroles, curries and chillis and freeze what you don't use. Bulk out casseroles in the slow cooker with oats, grated carrot and lentils. Use the oats sparingly unless you want flavoured porridge! - they do bulk out a lot. The lentils are best cooked for 10 minutes first or else they have a tendency to stay a little hard.

If you look in the weekly meal plan thread, some posters have veggie meal plans and it's always possible to adapt the non-veggie ones.

If you have a pressure cooker, pulses are much cheaper if you buy them dried and cook them, rather than ready cooked in tins.

Always think how you can s-t-r-e-t-c-h food around more meals - for example I used to buy a carton of silken tofu, and scramble it for 2 weekend breakfasts. Now I use the same tofu as the basis of a vegan meatloaf and it now provides 6 main meals. See the difference?

Check out Weezl's thread entitled something like "living healthily on 50p a day" - she's not veggie but does a lot of veggie meals and what's not veggie can be adapted.

Hope this helps.

newlywed

Gingham Ribbon did some threads on veggie cooking....

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=257885&highlight=

Spring: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=399846&highlight=
Summer: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=257885&highlight=

blueberrypie

newlywed wrote: »

Gingham Ribbon did some threads on veggie cooking....

Her mealplan is here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=2857738#post2857738

ItchieFeet

Hello there!

You could also try Slimming World's website - the Green days are completely vegetarian and there is a FREE sample weekly menu online to get started.

They even have home made chips - on a diet!! Yummm

pinksorrell

Thanks for all that! It's kept me busy sifting and sorting. I find meal plans very useful as knowing what I am going to make makes preparation easier and relieves stress. Less likely to be persuaded by kids to visit the local chip shop (again!)

There's a wealth of information on these pages when you've found what you're looking for. I shall be back.

I'm off now to make a potato dinner from the link to Weezl's pages. Result!!!!

savingforoz

Please share your meal plans when they're done, pinksorrell! Glad we've been able to help.

Penny-Pincher!!

Veggie or Soya curry or chilli or spagbol
Shepherds Pie
Cheese & Onion Pie
Veggie Crumble or pie
soup
Nut roasts